Great Buffy Rewatch of 2015: Reptile Boy

[gillo]

We're at the fifth episode of S2 now, and it seems in some ways to be just another MOTW episode, with a cheesy snake monster. Somebody really should have warned Mutant Enemy about them - do they ever really work? However, there is rather more depth here than one might expect, though the Spikelessness is depressing for some.

Comments

[kikimay]

As a non-American I would like to know if the frat-parties are this bad. I mean, all of these guys were creep sexual predators. Gross, gross, gross. I'd be scared to go in a party like that.

The Bangel scene in the graveyard comes from a Brazilian telenovela, for sure. XD I can't take Bangel seriously when they drop these bombs. Also, yes Angel, she's really sixteen! Major Lolita complex going on.

I think that BtVS generally makes really traumatic everything sex connected and this episode is an example with the giant penis monster.

[kikimay]

I'd seriously be scared to find myself in a party like that. I know that Cordy goes there because of her ambitions but ... uh, DO NOT WANT!

[gillo]

I think the snake=penis is possibly deliberate, though Greenwalt says nothing about it in the commentary.

We don't have fraternities here, unless you count the Bullingdon Club. I'm quite glad we don't.

[bogwitch]

>> What has Angel done to make Buffy feel so intensely? Really, what? He pretty much just stands around like a big lug. They never really talk about anything. So for Buffy at this point, it is clearly teenage crush. I will wait to be convinced of true love.

I have to say this is exactly what I have been thinking. I never bought the relationship anyway, but one of the things this rewatch has really shined a light on to me is just Buffy/Angel moves along without any concrete foundation. They don't talk to each other, Angel is barely there, how did they get to this point?

[gillo]

Angel is really Liam with a conscience and a lot more brooding practice. He doesn't seem much more mature than Buffy.

[velvetwhip]

Frat boys are legendary here for gang rape (and racism, but that's another horrible story), so yeah... not as inaccurate a portrayal as one might wish. Their sense of entitlement runs deep.

Gabrielle

[gillo]

Why are they still allowed/encouraged? I can see no benefit in them. Money must be at the root, I suppose.

[velvetwhip]

Yes indeed. Frat boys here tend to be drawn from the ranks of the One Percent, so they're not going anywhere... not even to the jails where many of them belong.

Gabrielle

[gillo]

I suppose the private nature of so many universities contributes to the whole thing too. And the tradition of alumnus funding on a grand scale. Closing down fart houses could hit the bottom line. Ugh.

[shapinglight]

I rewatched this episode just after there'd been a run of awful stories about fraternities abusing girls at parties (mostly read about through links on LJ), so I found the awful, entitled bunch really chilling, especially Tom, who seems so pleasant on first meeting.

He had Angel/Angelus echoes, I thought. Not in the sense of being like Angel in any way, but in the sense that he seems so nice and decent yet a monster lurks underneath. The difference of course is that Tom doesn't care about it, whereas Angel does until the ability to care is stripped away.

And yes, a lot of emphasis on the age difference between Buffy and Angel in this episode (though Angel acts so immature it's hard to remember it sometimes). Buffy's "When you kiss me, I want to die," comment should have been a big stonking warning to Angel to back off fast. Yes, she's old for her age in many ways, but in others she's still a child. But then so is he, I suppose (though when we get to his interactions with Faith in season 3, you wouldn't think so at all).

[gillo]

Boys with souls can do evil things. So why is Angel's such a big deal? Is it that even at his best he's a barely-restrained monster?

[shapinglight]

I think that's what he thinks. He really doesn't have much faith in himself.

[rebcake]

This was the first episode I watched. Cordelia was very amusing to me.

The awful reputation of frats aside, there is a "secret" society at Yale called "Skull and Bones" which has a lot of the demon-worshipping trappings you see in this episode, and the men (of course) who are admitted do indeed go on to be soul-sucking captains of industry and presidents and what all. It's all in good fun, though. Bitter? Me?

[perpetual]

Meh, I live down the street from Skull and Bones. The reputation is entirely about the reputation; nobody really expects there's anything demonic going on in the Yale secret societies.

[rebcake]

Well, of course not. It's pretty silly, actually, and I always got a kick out of it when Trudeau poked fun in Doonesbury. I'm just saying that the frat in this ep is a metaphor for that kind of thing. A what if all those rich white boys really did get their power from some evil demon? What if it wasn't just dress-up - not unlike what we call cosplay these days? The truth - that (many of) those that have think they deserve it and just keep taking - isn't really any more comforting is it? As Mal says in Firefly "every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sommbitch or another."

The other side of this - which the episode doesn't touch at all - is that people who "have not" very often don't do any better at being good people when they do finally get resources behind them. This episode is really bringing out my misanthropic side, I guess.

[perpetual]

Sure, and that adds a lot to the episode. I just think that the standard frat house stereotype, which uses its influence to cover actual crimes, is a closer parallel than the secret societies, which use empty secrets to look cool. Cultivating the appearance of danger and the occult means they benefit from the air of mystery without actually doing anything wrong. The reptile boys had it the other way around.

And okay, I have a bit of a soft spot for Skull and Bones. My dad sez they got the real skeleton of Geronimo in there!